Citizens Dedicated To Preserving Our Constitutional Republic
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said.
“We are not going to let this country be invaded!
We will not be stampeded!
We will not capitulate to lawlessness!
This is NOT business as usual.
This is the Trump era!," the Attorney General said.
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Pompeo: North Korea Must Denuclearize and They're on a Tight Timeline to Get It Done.
Fresh off of President Trump's Singapore summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is already laying down a timeline for when the regime must denuclearize.
During a debriefing meeting in Seoul with South Korean officials about the summit, Pompeo reportedly outlined a two-and-a-half year long timeline for "major disarmament."
Speaking to a small group of reporters and asked if he would like to accomplish major nuclear disarmament within Trump’s current term, which ends on Jan. 20, 2021, Pompeo replied:
"Oh yes, most definitively. Absolutely ... you used the term major, major disarmament, something like that? We're hopeful that we can achieve that in the two and a half years."
At the conclusion of the Singapore summit, Trump and Kim signed an agreement to move forward with a new U.S.-North Korea relationship, in addition to denuclearization and returning the remains of U.S. soliders killed or held as prisoners during the Korean War.
1. The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new U.S.–DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
2. The United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
3. Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
4. The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.
Pompeo plans to fully enforce the terms and explained in Singapore that the United States has the resources to rapidly denuclearize North Korea.
"For over three months, an interagency working group of over 100 experts across government has met multiple times per week to address technical and logistical issues associated with dismantling North Korea’s weapons programs. They include experts from the military charged with dismantling nuclear weapons; the Department of Energy, including PhDs and experts from DOE labs; and officials from the intelligence community covering North Korea. Those same experts also cover North Korea’s nuclear, chemical, biological, and missile programs," Pompeo said during a press conference.
"These experts include dozens of PhDs who have expertise in nuclear weapons, the fuel cycle, missiles, chemical and biological weapons. They have advanced degrees in nuclear engineering, physics, chemistry, aerospace, biology, and other relevant fields," he continued. "On the ground in Singapore, we have a team that includes the President’s senior most expert in weapons of mass destruction who can cover any technical needs that the meetings may present."
Preparing for future work ahead to deliver on the commitments made at the Singapore summit.
Denuclearization isn’t something that ends badly for the North Koreans. In fact, it’s just the opposite -- it leads to a brighter, better future for DPRK. - Secretary Pompeo
pukelosi, Schumer Criticize North Korea Summit.
612/18 2:10 PM Lauretta Brown
House Minority Leader nancy pukelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader chuck schumer (D-NY) criticized President Trump’s meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un Tuesday, claiming the meeting legitimized Kim’s brutal regime without establishing a real path to denuclearization.
“Apparently, the President handed Kim Jong-un concessions in exchange for vague promises that do not approach a clear and comprehensive pathway to denuclearization and non-proliferation,” pukelosi said in a statement.
“In his haste to reach an agreement, President Trump elevated North Korea to the level of the United States while preserving the regime’s status quo,” she added. “The millions of families currently living in fear of nuclear weapons in the region deserve strong and smart leadership built on diplomacy and engagement with our regional partners and allies.”
schumer spoke on the Senate floor about his concerns with the agreement that was signed at the summit.
"This communique lists denuclearization as a far off goal, but includes no deal to a pathway to achieve it,” he argued. “No details about how the United States might verify that North Korea has disarmed when they repeatedly lied in the past. The entire document is short on details."
He said that through the meeting, President Trump has given “a brutal and repressive dictatorship the international legitimacy it has long craved.”
"We want to see these efforts succeed and ensure that what has just transpired was not a reality show summit," Schumer emphasized. "What the United States has gained is vague and unifiable at best. What North Korea has gained, however, tangible and lasting."
"President Trump has not made much progress toward that goal yet and had given up substantial leverage already," he concluded. "The leverage of joint military exercises, the leverage of an audience with the president of the United States."
The president was optimistic about the joint statement he signed with Kim Jong Un.
"Chairman Kim and I just signed a joint statement in which he reaffirmed his unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula," Trump told reporters Tuesday. "As history has proven over and over again, adversaries can indeed become friends...We're prepared to start a new history, and we're ready to write a new chapter between our nations."
Trump announced that joint military exercises with South Korea would end "unless and until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should."
U.S. economic sanctions on North Korea will remain in place until denuclearization is complete.
The Most Important Fact About the Singapore Summit.
6/12/18 11:37 am Jesse Walker
The de-escalation we're seeing now is infinitely preferable to the needless escalation we witnessed last summer.
The most important fact about the Trump-Kim summit is that less than a year ago both of these men sounded like they were ready to launch a nuclear war.
For anyone who gives a rat's ass about the millions of people who would die in such a conflict, the difference between then and now is as welcome as it is sunshine.
If you're not pleased with that shift—if you're firing off tweets about what a "propaganda victory" it is for Kim to share a stage with a U.S. president, as if such trivial status games are what's important here, or why Donald Trump is supposedly Neville Chamberlain, then your priorities are desperately askew.
The deescalation we're seeing now is infinitely preferable to the needless escalation we witnessed last summer.
Is it gross for a president to flatter a vile, evil, murdering dictator?
Yes. But let's be clear:
Presidents flatter vile dictators all the time. (Google "Saudi Arabia.")
At least in this case there's the hope of cooling off those nuclear tensions, and of boosting rather than undermining South Korea's push for peace. Trump is even skylarking about perhaps one day pulling America's troops out of the peninsula. I'll believe that when I see it, but it's surely better to have it on the rhetorical table than to have it be as unthinkable to the president as it is to the foreign-policy Blob.
Yes, the Bolton-Pence sabotage caucus could still crash this in countless ways. None of this is irreversible, and we may reach a day when the Korean peace process is as depleted as the diplomatic initiatives Trump smothered in Iran and Cuba.
But for now the trajectory is in the right direction. The issue that last year looked like it could turn into the worst legacy of the Trump presidency now has a chance to be the greatest legacy of the Trump presidency.
If nothing else, there is at least one way that life in June of 2018 is better than life in August of 2017.
CNN's Grandstanding Newsman Interrupts Historic Summit.
Several meetings between Trump and Kim occurred throughout the day in Singapore.
The North Korean government reportedly committed to starting denuclearization immediately by dismantling a "major" missile testing site.
Trump sounded cautiously optimistic, wisely following the Reagan maxim, "trust, but verify," when it comes to handling the historically duplicitous regime.
Unsurprisingly, neither leader responded to Acosta.
But on social media, the criticism against its reporter was relentless.
Easily the most annoying person in the White House press corps, and that’s saying something considering how crowded the field is.--T. Becket AdamsMiss America: The Latest Institution Destroyed by the Left.
The left's decades long attempt to radically change the Boy Scouts has ended in triumph. Now that the Boy Scouts is admitting not only older girls but also younger girls -- as Cub Scouts -- it is dropping "Boy" from its name and becoming Scouts BSA. Thanks to the left, the Boy Scouts, one of the most socially and morally constructive organizations in America, is no longer the Boy Scouts.
As a result of that, as a result of the decision to admit openly gay males as troop leaders (the Boy Scouts never asked potential troop leaders about their sexual orientation but did not allow openly gay troop leaders) and as a result of factors specific to the Mormon church, the largest sponsor of Boy Scout troops in America, the church has ended its 100-year relationship with the Boy Scouts.
Another victim of the left in recent weeks is the arts. Last week, The New York Times published a serious "review" on a major new "art work" at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The "art work" is a set of four giant piles of sculpted excrement. As described by Times writer Nina Siegal: "I walked into the excrement.
"There were four giant turds inside the 16,000 square feet of muse...
The artistic left is infatuated with feces, urine and menstrual blood. Last year, New York City's famed Guggenheim Museum featured an all-gold toilet bowl into which visitors were invited to relieve themselves. As the exhibit was titled "America," one could then literally urinate and defecate on America. Why not? The left does that to America and Western civilization every day.
The latest victim of the left is the 'Miss America contest'. The Miss America board announced that contestants will no longer wear swimsuits or evening gowns because Miss America will no longer be about physical beauty. It will be about "the hopes and aspirations" of 52 women contestants.
My first reaction is: Why stop there? To be consistent with its new ideals, the event should no longer be televised but rather broadcast on the radio. Only then will the contestants' looks be truly irrelevant.
The left, which has brought "sex week" to almost every college campus, which has introduced coed dormitories with coed showers and bathrooms, and which has told young women that sex without any commitment should be as much fun for them as it is for men, is now the guardian of modesty at the Miss America contest.
In particular, feminists hate it when women try to look sexy, especially in the eyes of men.
One of the left's favorite terms to describe the Miss America swimsuit competition and even the evening gown competition is "dehumanizing."
In a long article on the Miss America decision, The New York Times quoted Julie Zeilinger, who founded "a feminist blog called FBomb": "in 2018 this organization has realized it's dehumanizing to compare and judge women's bodies in front of a vast, international audience." This feminist charge is ubiquitous but never explained. Why is it dehumanizing?
One irony is feminists have argued for decades that women should be allowed to walk around topless, just as men can. Another irony is that when non-muslims argue that muslim women wearing a chador is dehumanizing, the left charges them with intolerance and Islamophobia. A third irony is women are as interested in seeing beautiful women in swimsuits as men are!
I was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, and I recall my mother and father enjoying the Miss America pageant every year. They would discuss their favorites with each other, both of them perfectly at peace with the proceedings, as was the Christian majority.
Which raises a final irony:
When America was far more conservative, far more religious and far more concerned with daily modesty in dress, and when it insisted that male students and female students reside in separate dorms at college, it celebrated the Miss America pageant with its swimsuit competition. That was a healthier America.
Inside of a few weeks, the left has gravely damaged the Boy Scouts, probably destroyed the Miss America pageant and pounded another nail into the coffin of art.
That's what the left does best - ruins whatever it touches. That's pretty much all it does!
Putting America First Has Made USA No. 1
6/12/18 Stephen Moore
The left is quickly running out of excuses for why Donald Trump's economic policies have caused a boom, rather than the bust that they predicted with such great certainty.
Last year, when the U.S. economy began to percolate with faster growth, the media and other Trump haters argued that this simply reflected a pickup in worldwide growth: Trump was riding the wave of what economists were calling "synchronized growth."
But now what do they have to say?
The latest indicators are that, as a Wall Street Journal headline reported on June 3: "Global Economic-Growth Story Fades."
Japan's growth rate is estimated to have slowed to slightly negative in the first quarter.
The European Union was at an anemic 0.4%.
The pace of global growth is expected to be much slower over the next two years, according to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Then there is the outlier: the United States. Here at home, growth is sizzling.
Almost all economists now predict a growth rate of above 4% for the second quarter of 2018, and Dan Clifton of Strategas, one of the best forecasters of recent times, believes we may hit 5% later this year. He points to the surge of investment capital flowing into the United States and how the increased business spending points to several more quarters of this torrid growth. Meanwhile, the rest of the world treads water.
Then there is the argument that Trump's policies have nothing to do with the American prosperity burst. Politico's economics reporter recently published a column insisting that the "GOP tax cut is not why the economy is booming." He contemptuously added, "Economist are rolling their eyes at candidates' claims that Trump's policies inspired faster growth." Which economists?
As it happens, this is the same gang that was dead wrong about the...
Whatever the cause, it is undeniable that America has a new spring in its step!
After a decade of malaise, the American economy is the envy of the world today.
A recent Bloomberg article reports: "The U.S. dethroned Hong Kong to retake first place among the world's most competitive economies, thanks to faster economic growth and a supportive atmosphere for scientific and technological innovation, according to annual rankings by the Switzerland-based IMD World Competitiveness Center."
But the ultimate judges of all this are the American people -- the voters. They know something big is going on here.
In the years before the 2016 election, about 3 in 10 voters described the economy as good or great.
This year, 7 in 10 do. That surge in optimism began immediately after Trump's election and hasn't subsided.
The same trend is true for the confidence of small businesses and manufacturing businesses.
Up, up and away.
Perhaps the best news of all is to think that maybe Trump's critics are right that the economic thrust from the tax cut hasn't even kicked in yet.
If that's true, then buckle up, because we're in for a hell of a ride!
Supreme Court Gives States the Green Light to Clean Up Voter Rolls.
6/11/18 Jason Snead / Hans von Spakovsky
Can a state take reasonable steps to ensure the accuracy of its voter rolls by removing people who have left the jurisdiction?
On Monday, by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court answered “yes,” affirming an Ohio law allowing for the removal of voters who have left the state. The Supreme Court reversed a 6th Circuit ruling on Monday that prevented Ohio from maintaining up-to-date voter rolls.
The opinion in Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute, written by Justice Samuel Alito, and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch, is a major win for voters, who have an interest not only in ensuring that states offer sufficient opportunities to register, but also that they take steps to ensure the integrity of the electoral process.
A critical part of that process is guaranteeing that voter registration records are accurate and up-to-date, a task with which many states seem to be struggling. According to one 2012 Pew study, 24 million voter registrations nationwide—one out of every eight—are inaccurate or outdated, and some 2.8 million voters are registered in two or more states.
A study of the voter registration records in just 21 states by the Government Accountability Institute showed that almost 8,500 individuals voted illegally in more than one state in the 2016 presidential election.
Clearly, voter rolls need some cleaning up. Lawmakers in Columbus set out to do just that, adopting a state law creating a mechanism to remove voters believed to have moved out of the state. That process takes six years and several steps to complete.
First, a voter must fail to partake in “voter activity,” including not just casting a ballot but also other actions like signing a petition, for two years. Ohio then mails a pre-stamped, pre-addressed notice to the voter asking that he confirm he is still a resident of Ohio. If the notice is not returned, and the voter fails to cast a ballot in any election over the next four years, state officials may then remove the voter on the grounds that he is no longer a resident.
Unfortunately, even reasonable election integrity policies like this invited the ire of liberal activists, and they took Ohio to court to stop its voter-roll maintenance activities.
In Husted, the challengers claimed that the Buckeye State’s process for maintaining the accuracy of its voter rolls violated two federal voter registration laws: the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.
The National Voter Registration Act sets out the requirements states must meet to remove a voter who is no longer eligible “by reason of … a change in the residence of the registrant” that precludes him from voting in the original jurisdiction. The Help America Vote Act, meanwhile, requires states to undertake a process to purge inaccurate entries.
Under the National Voter Registration Act, in order to remove a voter for nonresidency, a state must either receive written notice from the voter attesting to the move, or the voter must fail to return a card affirming his residency and then fail to vote in the next two federal general elections. The Ohio law was obviously fully in compliance with that provision of the law.
Nevertheless, the challengers in Husted claimed that Ohio ran afoul of the law’s “failure-to-vote clause,” which stipulates that no person can be removed from a voter roll “by reason of the person’s failure to vote” without following the law’s procedures. They asserted, incorrectly, that Ohio’s use of a voter’s failure to vote at two points in its clean-up process—first, to trigger the mailing, and then again during the subsequent four-year period—violated this provision. They also argued that Ohio was removing eligible voters as part of its clean-up process.
The district court rejected both claims, but on appeal, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the lower court, holding that Ohio had indeed violated the National Voter Registration Act.
Now, the Supreme Court has resolved the matter, handing down a victory for Ohio, and for the integrity of American elections. Judge Alito’s opinion made swift work of the challengers’ claims.
First, Alito noted that Ohio’s process—mailing a notice seeking confirmation of residency, followed by a waiting period encompassing two federal general elections—followed the process prescribed in the National Voter Registration Act “to the letter.” In fact, he wrote, “not only are states allowed to remove registrants who satisfy these requirements, but federal law makes this removal mandatory.”
Next, the court rejected the claim that Ohio ran afoul of the failure-to-vote clause, concluding that the law “simply forbids the use of nonvoting as the sole criterion for removing a registrant”—something Ohio does not do.
Rather, nonvoting is treated as evidence of nonresidency, but is not itself sufficient to result in removal from the voter roll.
This is exactly how Congress intended nonvoting to be used. Not only did it make it part of the requirements prescribed in the National Voter Registration Act for removal, it subsequently included provisions in the Help America Vote Act specifying that no one could be removed “solely” for this reason, and amended the original failure-to-vote clause to specify that it “may not be construed to prohibit a state from using” the procedures on which Ohio based its law.
Adopting the challengers’ argument would have led to a bizarre reading of the statute in which it would be illegal for any state to adhere to the National Voter Registration Act’s own requirements. “Congress could not have meant for the failure-to-vote clause to cannibalize” the other provisions of the law.
In fact, as Thomas pointed out in his concurrence, reading the statute the way the challengers claimed “would seriously interfere with the state’s constitutional authority to set and enforce voter qualifications.” Such an interpretation would render the National Voter Registration Act unconstitutional.
Justices stephen breyer, Darth bader ginsburg, sonia sotomayor, and elena kagan dissented, arguing that Ohio violated the National Voter Registration Act’s requirement that a state make “a reasonable effort to remove the names of ineligible voters” because “failure to vote is not a reasonable method for identifying voters whose registrations are likely invalid.”
Judge Alito rejected this claim, pointing out that it is not for the “federal courts to go beyond the restrictions” in the law and “strike down any state law that does not meet” the justices’ arbitrary conceptions of “reasonableness.”
Policy judgments like these are properly addressed not in court, but in Congress. And Congress determined when it passed the National Voter Registration Act that a failure to vote after receiving a written notice from the state is, in fact, a “reasonable method” for identifying voters who have moved out of state.
Hopefully, this opinion will spark a new wave of state interest in adopting modern measures and using new technologies designed to remove ineligible voters from the rolls. So long as voter registrations remain an area rife with inaccuracy, states invite the potential for fraud and risk damaging faith in the electoral process itself.
"They didn't see it coming" and were “blindsided,” Engel concluded. It was shocking, he said, because these exercises are fundamental to our military relationship with South Korea.
Denuclearization: President Trump and Kim Jong Un End Historic Summit With Signing Ceremony.
6/12/18 5:25 AM KatiePavlich
President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un conducted a comprehensive, in-depth, and sincere exchange of opinions on the issues related to the establishment of new U.S.–DPRK relations and the building of a lasting and robust peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
President Trump committed to provide security guarantees to the DPRK, and Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,"
Trump and Kim released in a joint statement at a signing ceremony early Tuesday morning.
"The United States and the DPRK commit to hold follow-up negotiations, led by the U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and a relevant high-level DPRK official, at the earliest possible date, to implement the outcomes of the U.S.–DPRK summit," the statement continues.
Both leaders agreed to the following:
1. The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new U.S.–DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
2. The United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
3. Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
4. The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.
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